Talk:Practiced Combatant (3.5e Feat)

Balance Rating 0/10

This feat breaks several rules conventions. First of all, it is much more general than other feats that improve your chance to hit, such as Weapon Focus. Remember that base attack bonus also applies to rolls like grapple checks and melee and ranged touch attacks for spells. It is therefore way too good.

Your feat is even a lot better than the Epic feat Epic Prowess, which only gives +1 to attacks (i.e., no bonus to grapple checks, and no 4th attack).

Also remember that several classes are thinly balanced by their bad BAB. The lower BAB doesn't really hinder the Psychic Warrior or Druid to surpass the Fighter in melee combat at some level, but this way it at least takes longer.

Now, what's even worse, with a feat that boosts BAB for multiclassed fighters builds like

fighter2/duskblade2/wizard2/abjurantchampion5/spellsword1/EK8

become even stronger. (Slightly modify the above standard gish for Ftr 3) In fact, the standard problem with all Gish builds, how to achieve BAB 16 for 4 attacks, is easily solved with this feat.

In the end, with your feat, many more players will dip into fighter level 3 instead of two. But since multiclassing doesn't even hurt the BAB anymore, there is one less reason to stay in fighter, making the class even worse.

I see no real way of trimming the feat to a normal power level, as no feat ever should raise the BAB. --Mkill 10:19, 16 July 2007 (MDT)

These issues were debated quite extensively on the WotC boards (unfortunately I can't find the thread, it was a long time ago). You can't really compare a feat which helps a weak character "catch up" with a feat that adds to the power of an already-good character. Otherwise Practiced Spellcaster is insanely overpowered (+4 to caster level for all purposes: compare with the various "Spell Penetration" feats which give a smaller bonus than this, and only versus Spell Resistance). Epic Prowess allows better-than-Fighter BAB and can be taken multiple times. Furthermore, a "gish" who takes 3 Fighter levels is lagging at least 2 caster levels behind a standard Eldritch Knight (and a Druid will likewise lose 3 Druid levels too), and no character with this feat will ever get a Fighter's BAB anyhow (because the full power of the feat, the +2 bonus, only cuts in when the character has lost out on 4 points of BAB). It merely turns a seriously-underpowered character (one who sucks badly at an activity that he's devoted at least 3 levels to) into a moderately-competent one. There are already various other ways of increasing BAB, and all give the appropriate number of iterative attacks too: the "Skilled" weapon property (Complete Arcane) gives 3/4 BAB (that's +5 BAB for a 20th level Wizard with no Fighter levels at all), and Divine Power and Tenser's Transformation give full BAB, eclipsing this feat entirely. Findail 07:20, 23 July 2007 (MDT)

You brought up several issues, so let me answer one by one.

1. The WotC boards have an archive, so please bring up that link.
2. There is a difference between Practiced Spellcaster and a BAB booster feat. First of all, spellcaster level is only one aspect of spellcasting (the others are number of spells, highest spell level and save DC). A multiclassed spellcaster lacks behind in all four, but Practiced Spellcaster brings only one up to par. It is *not* the same as a +1 level in a spellcasting class. Your feat, on the other hand, boosts a fighter/cleric and similar way beyond the fighter, because a better BAB is all he's got. BAB is also more versatile, it also boosts your attack with melee touch attack and ray spells.
3. Yes, there are spells that bring your BAB up to par. But Tenser's Transformation has a serious drawback, which is you can't cast spells anymore, so it's just a backup for the wizard who ran out of spells. Divine Power, on the other hand, is regularly regarded as broken, especially in combination with Divine Metamagic + Persistant Spells (it is exactly the combination of the three why clerics are called Codzilla at the WotC Forum). So no, copying that spell into a feat is no good idea.
4. A gish has to take Fighter levels to enter EK and other prestige classes in the first place, so taking a third fighter level isn't that much of a cost.

Let's look the results of the feat, by looking at the minimum build to achieve the maximum effect (+2 BAB):

Fighter 3 / med BAB 13 => BAB +14 (Psychic Warrior, Cleric, Bard, Druid, Warlock...)

Fighter 3 / bad BAB 7 => BAB +8 (Wizard, Sorcerer, Psion)

Fighter 3 / non-full BAB 1 / another 1 / another 1 / another 1 => 5

The feat basicly guarantees that you BAB will never be more than 2 behind your class level. It basicly just screws anyone who chooses full BAB classes that do not have a full spellcasting progression on the side. You make one way of character building so good that everybody else is screwed.

And I'm not even testing full optimized builds here. I don't want to know what this feat does in a Radiant Servant of Pelor, Sublime Chord or Urpriest build.

Don't forget that BAB is one of the stepping stones to keep feats and PrCs limited to certain levels, and this feat also screws with these. --Mkill 10:22, 23 July 2007 (MDT)

I'm not having any luck searching for the thread. There have been several "prunings", and not everything is in the archives. Ironically, at least 3 other people have independently come up with similar feats:

http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-377743.html

http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-354616.html (scroll down...)

http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-386703.html

...However, all of these are significantly more powerful than mine (and very controversial!), either because the requirement is lax (e.g. no more than 1 level of Fighter) or because the full +2 is immediately available to a character with only a -2 BAB shortfall (i.e. some multiclass characters will lose no BAB at all).

Forcing a spellcaster to take 3 levels of Fighter to qualify is a major requirement. For a Wizard, the loss of 3 caster levels is considered so serious that it "balances" up to 13 levels of Cleric spellcasting (via 3 levels of Cleric and 10 levels of Mystic Theurge). Similarly with the Arcane Trickster, which gains much of the power of a Rogue. For the Eldritch Knight, the loss of only 2 caster levels gives +5 BAB and significantly more hitpoints (10 from EK levels plus whatever the Fighter-type class gave).

I appreciate that BAB is more important to a Fighter-type character than "caster level" is to a spellcaster: but that's why the bonus is capped at +2 and phased in gradually, so that the character is guaranteed to suffer a BAB penalty regardless, and the full +2 isn't available until the shortfall is so bad that the character is still left with at least a -2 penalty. Furthermore, arguments based on the importance of BAB cut both ways: a Fighter with a -4 BAB penalty has a crippling disadvantage in combat for this very reason (he has pretty much completely wasted his Fighter levels), whereas a character with a few levels of spellcasting ability and Practiced Spellcaster can still inflict serious damage.

Basically, the feat allows a sort of "lite" Eldritch Knight with inferior spellcasting (at least 1 level behind a normal EK) and inferior BAB, but with the opportunity to have more diverse abilities from other spellcasting PrC's (like Loremaster or whatever). Its usefulness with actual EK builds is rather limited by the sacrifice of at least another caster level due to the "dead" 1st level of EK. As for the ease of gaining 16+ BAB and 4 iterative attacks: a standard F1/W6/EK10 will already have a BAB of 14 by 17th level, and by then a BAB of 16 by 20th is easy to obtain (anything better than 3 more Wizard levels will get there: 1 more level of Fighter and 2 of Wizard, for instance). To make use of this feat, the character would need 3 Fighter levels, hence sacrificing the ability to cast 9th level spells pre-Epic (F3/W6/EK10 at 19th level, Wizard level 15, 1 level to go, BAB 16 without the feat, 17 with it): and, even then, the full +2 bonus won't kick in until 20th level.

The design of the feat (and the delay in getting the bonus) ensures that the character will always be inferior in combat to a straight Fighter-type, and always significantly weaker in spellcasting or other abilities to a straight caster or whatever (at least 3 levels behind). Given the number of times this feat has been re-invented, I think we need to keep a version here with more balanced requirements than some out there... Findail 13:31, 23 July 2007 (MDT)